Briefly Bio raises $1.2M to tackle science's reproducibility challenge

Science is in a reproducibility crisis. In preclinical research, it’s estimated that over 50 per cent of efforts to reproduce experiments fail, costing the industry over $50 billion each year. 

Solving this problem, is biotech startup Briefly Bio, who today announced it has raised $1.2 million Pre-Seed funding. 

Briefly has developed software that makes lab work more reproducible by helping scientists capture and share their work clearly and consistently.

Biological experiments have become increasingly complex. With this growing complexity, details that are critical to our shared understanding are often undocumented and lost. This makes scientific collaboration inefficient: lab scientists struggle to reproduce and build on top of each other's experiments; data scientists do not have the necessary context to analyse the data produced in their labs; and automation teams lack all details to build robotic labs.

As a result, Briefly has created a shared language for experiments that is consistent across scientists, and clear for any collaborator to understand.

Its software uses AI to convert existing experiment descriptions into this consistent format, while automatically filling in gaps and spotting errors. This helps capture the value of every experiment run, enabling scientists to learn from each other’s work.

Harry Rickerby, CEO and co-founder at Briefly Bio, commented: 

“Scientific methods are a bit like software code; they are a set of instructions that define how an experiment should be run. The majority of this ‘code’ is incomplete, since writing up each experiment completely takes a huge amount of effort.

With LLMs, there’s a way to make these methods consistent without imposing on a scientist’s workflow. As Github helped software engineers collaborate and build on each other’s code, we think Briefly can help scientists and engineers do the same with their experiments.”

Dr Gena Nikitin, Founder of Miphic. While Dr Maria Anastasina, Wet Lab Head at the Evolutionary and Synthetic Biology Unit, OIST called this “a revolution in documenting lab experiments.” 

“It is the future of foolproof knowledge-sharing between scientists.” 

“Briefly has become a core part of our lab's knowledge base and a great help to me in training researchers and lab management.” 

Compound VC led Briefly Bio’s funding, with participation from NP Hard, Tiny VC and angel investors across tech and biotech.

Shelby Newsad, an Investor at Compound, commented:

“The crux of successful science lies in consistent and executable methods. Whereas most bio software companies focus on data and its analysis, Briefly goes upstream to the core problem space of reproducibility via protocols. 

For the first time in science history, this incentivises scientists to share more of their previously tacit knowledge. The fact that Briefly-made methods can be built and collaborated upon creates the unique potential for network effects from their software.”

Lead image: Briefly Bio. Photo: uncredited.